Koch suit vs. pranksters dismissed

A federal judge in Utah on Monday tossed Koch Industries’s lawsuit against the pranksters who set up a fake website and sent out a bogus press release saying the company had found religion on climate change.

In a case being watched for First Amendment implications, Judge Dale Kimball of the U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City also said Koch can’t disclose the identities of the “Youth for Climate Truth” members or use any other information obtained via subpoena from two Utah-based domain hosting companies.

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The ruling is a major one as courts navigate the intersection of the First Amendment with anonymous speech and computer hacking on the Internet. Koch’s claims included charges of trademark infringement, unfair competition, cybersquatting and breach of the company website’s terms of use.

“This will prevent companies like Koch from using lawsuits from intimidating people on the Web,” said Deepak Gupta of Public Citizen, who represents the pranksters.

Youth for Climate Truth set up the fake website and press release in December saying Koch was changing its position on global warming and environmental policy to no longer fund climate skeptics. It was quickly outed in the press as a hoax, and Kimball noted nobody in the media was fooled.

“We assumed they would be upset about it,” one of the anonymous pranksters told the New York Times in February. “But we had no guess that they would go to the level of a lawsuit. It’s ridiculous and overblown. What we did is completely acceptable, as parody.”

Koch communications director Melissa Cohlmia issued a limited statement: "We are disappointed by the judge's decision. We have no further comment at this time."

The company has said the lawsuit is not an effort to “silence” its critics. Owners Charles and David Koch have been under a microscope since the New Yorker ran a lengthy story about their political activities last summer.

“This is not a lawsuit about freedom of speech,” the company said in a late January statement on its website. “We believe in a vigorous political debate. We are not seeking in any way to silence our critics. This lawsuit was filed because the integrity of our computer systems and our valuable intellectual property was compromised and used without permission, in violation of the Terms of Service and federal law.”

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 5:00 p.m. on May 9, 2011.